A veritable rainbow of colours flashed before Mike Richardson's eyes
Friday. First, he saw orange. His blue and silver Prestige Inns Dodge,
which suffered damage in Toronto earlier this month, has steering problems
and is unreliable for Sunday's Barber Dodge Series race, part of Vancouver's
annual Molson Indy autofest this weekend. Then he saw black, as in being
black-flagged. During free practice Friday morning, his dayglow-coloured
backup spilled oil onto the track after a loose transmission plug vibrated
free. Lastly, he saw red. His temper began boiling when, after his pit
crew fixed the loose plug, an accident took place and the red flag popped
out, which all but gobbled up any free practice remaining. "It
just wasn't my day," said Richardson, who was four seconds off
the pace after getting only eight laps in. "Getting the plug fixed
took around 12 minutes, then there was the accident. By the time they
got all that jammed-up traffic cleared, I could only get one lap in.
"I was really hoping to get some hot laps in, which I didn't. When
I got those early laps in, everything was good. After that, (everything)
just stunk." Despite having an off-day, the 35-year-old Kelowna
resident is surprisingly upbeat. "What can you do?" he said.
"All-in-all, it was a good day. The weather was nice and I know
for qualifying (today), I'll be able to do much better. The track is
in great condition and the times should be fast.

"There won't be any excuses." Qualifying takes place at 1
p.m., with Sunday's 45-minute timed race getting under way at 10:15
a.m. In Friday's free practice, the unofficial times were already better
than last year's pole position time. In other action Friday, qualifying
took place for CASCAR's race today on the 1.781-mile street circuit
near False Creek. Results were not available by deadline. Today, CASCAR
has 15-minute warm-up this morning, starting at 8:30 a.m., with racing
at 3:45 p.m. In between those time slots, CART has practice (1o am.-11:15
a.m.), then qualifying (1:45 p.m.-2:45 p.m.), as will Barber Dodge (practice,
9:15 a.m.-9:45 a.m.; qualifying 1 p.m.-1:30 p.m.).